Radar Contact Lost: The Podcast Dave Gorham

On February 3, 1959, a small, single-engine, 4-passenger plane took off from a remote airfield in rural Iowa. It was after midnight. It was snowing. It was windy. Moments later, the plane rolled over and flew into the ground at approximately 170mph – or about 275 kph. The 21-year-old pilot and the three passengers were killed on impact. The injuries to all four were horrific. This small crash, on a cold winter night, would reverberate through history – not only to this day, but likely until the end of time. But why? Did the pilot make errors? Was the young pilot in over his head? Was he even qualified? Could the plane’s instruments be blamed? Was the weather to blame?  And then there’s this: Was there a gunshot onboard that killed the pilot and took the plane down?

In this episode, the Radar Contact Lost team will examine what happened – I’ll start with the weather, but there were other issues – issues that, on their own, might’ve caused the plane to crash even without the complicating factor of snow, wind and darkness. I’ll also look at the pilot and his qualifications. I'll look at the plane and explain its unflattering reputation. I'll talk to pilots for their perspective. And I'll look at the famous musicians whose bright careers were tragically cut short.

On the evening of February 12, 2009, Colgan Air Flight 3407 was on final approach to Runway 23 at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport in Buffalo, New York. It was dark, it was snowing, it was windy and the pilots had noted the accumulation of ice on the wings and windshield of the 78-seat regional airliner. Still, the pilots were not under undue stress as the cockpit voice recorders indicated a casual, unhurried atmosphere, there was even some unrelated chit-chat on the flight deck. Then, just moments before landing, air traffic controllers noticed the plane was no longer on their radar screens. Flight 3407 was down for reasons unknown.
In the post-crash investigation, the most likely cause of the crash – the weather (including the snow, the wind and the ice) was quickly dismissed. If not the weather, then what happened to Colgan Air Flight 3407 that caused it to fall out of the night sky and claim the lives of all on board and one on the ground?

On final approach to Havana’s José Martí International Airport in 1977, the Aeroflot Ilyushin IL-62M with 69 people on board, descended below the clouds and the pilot immediately was confronted with power lines between the plane and the runway – and the runway was close. The pilot attempted to pull the nose up to avoid the powerlines, but the emergency maneuver was not enough – the plane clipped the power lines and the steel-reinforced cables severed the vertical stabilizer from the rest of the plane.  Rendered uncontrollable, the plane pitched sharply down and to the right, impacting the ground within seconds of contact with the power lines. The plane burst into flames, and though the rear of the fuselage was relatively intact, there were only two survivors.

What, exactly, happened on this day, some 46 years ago? An airliner from one of the world’s largest airlines clipping powerlines? A rookie mistake like this seems impossible. How did – how could – this happen? There aren’t many details, but the Radar Contact Lost team examines the details and tries to fill in the blanks.

At just before 2 o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, March 5, 1966, British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 911, took off from Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. Bound for Hong Kong, the Boeing 707 broke apart in mid-air, just 15 minutes after departure. The crash left no survivors. The weather conditions were not an issue – at least, nothing obvious: there were no thunderstorms, no typhoons, there was no rain or snow. In fact, it was a sunny, clear, cloud-free day. It was so nice that the crew had requested a clearance so that they could stray from their intended route to Hong Kong, so that the captain could give the passengers a glorious view of the snow-capped and iconic Mt. Fuji. It was while viewing Mt. Fuji in this “sightseeing mode,” that Flight 911 met its demise.
What happened to Flight 911? What caused the mid-air break-up? Was it a bomb? Did the plane strike the mountainside? Was it a mechanical failure of some kind? Was the plane unsafe? Had the crew made a mistake? Or, despite the sunny skies, was the weather to blame. 

In this episode, the Radar Contact Lost team will examine what happened. We’ll look at the airplane, the pilot, the airline and Mt. Fuji itself; we’ll also take a dive into the phenomenon known as Clear Air Turbulence - not only what it is, but how, why and where it occurs and why, on this day over Japan, BOAC Flight 911 was ripped apart in midair. 

Today’s episode, “When a Volcano Silenced a Boeing 747 Over the Indian Ocean," is the heart-stopping tale of a commercial jetliner – a Boeing 747 – that, contrary to every other episode in this podcast series, did not crash. However, the world’s largest passenger jet at the time came about as close to a spectacular and deadly crash as it could, before the crew saved the plane and the lives of everyone on board from near-certain destruction. Even after the plane landed safely, the mystery of what happened in the dark skies, so far above the ocean remained a mystery for days. How the superior airmanship of this crew saved the lives of 248 passengers, 15 crew and the B-747 has been called one of the most heroic of all time.

Join the "Radar Contact Lost" team as we discuss the meteorology, the weather, the piloting, the plane and even the geology of this amazing story.

“When a Helicopter Crash Silenced ‘Number One’" is about the 1990 crash of a Bell JetRanger helicopter that was carrying a pilot and four passengers. The helicopter crashed into a ski slope at night and in the fog, killing all on board. Among the passengers was Stevie Ray Vaughan, the legendary Blues guitarist from Texas. The crash stunned the world with not only the crash that was attributed to pilot error, but the end of an amazing career of a guitarist that had burst onto the scene only seven years before with his debut album, Texas Flood, which went double-platinum and was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Traditional Blues Performance category. The crash occurred late at night and in fog. A lot of helicopters, unfortunately, have crashed in fog. Except that’s not the end of the story. In fact, it’s really only a cursory understanding of the crash, as there were other factors both before the crash and factors after the helicopter lifted above the ground – neither of which were mentioned in the official Aviation Accident Report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board. Though fog was a significant factor to the crash, there was another factor that was as surprising as it was dangerous, and it was perhaps even more lethal than the fog.